Are You Programming Yourself For Automatic Success Or Automatic Failure?

I listened to a ridiculously interesting audiobook over the last few days, called The New Psycho-Cybernetics by Dr Maxwell Maltz & Dan Kennedy.

It was an awesome look into how our brains actually interpret the commands that we give it, and how those commands will lead to automatic success or automatic failure.

Remember the Reticular Activating System?

I wrote a blog post & email on this two weeks ago. If you missed it you can read it here.

In simple terms the RAS picks out things from the vast amount of sights, sounds and so on that exist in the world around us, that it thinks are important to us.

It’s like a big neon sign flashing in front of your conscious awareness that shouts “HEY LOOK AT THIS, IT’S IMPORTANT TO YOU!” (Ever thought of buying a new car and suddenly that model of car seems to be everywhere? That’s your RAS in action).

The RAS is part of what Dr Maxwell Maltz calls the Servo Mechanism. This is the part of your brain that subconsciously directs every single action that you take towards creating an environment around you, that perfectly mirrors what you hold in your mind.

Focus every day on “how much of a struggle life is”, and your servo-mechanism will make sure that your reality mirrors that. Everything you see, hear, and do will be in line with this image that you hold of the world.

Your servo mechanism says “OK, he’s constantly feeding me images of difficulty, suffering, and hard times. He must want things to be like that, so I’m going to make him climb up the side of a metaphorical mountain instead of taking the elevator right next to us”.

You’ll subconsciously start making decisions and doing things that will make your life so much harder than it needs to be, and you won’t even know why you’re doing it.

Automatic route to failure, or to success. You choose.

The problem is that our servo mechanism is a right-brain function. This means it’s creative. It doesn’t talk in words or logic, it talks in images and feelings.

So what do most of us do when we want to change something, get something, or do something? We tell ourselves with words about what we should do. We tell ourselves with words to go to the gym three times a week and eat healthy food.

Yet at the same time, we’ll think about how we can never lose weight, how we really want that cake, and we’ll vividly picture in our minds all the things about our body that we’re not happy with. What message is the servo mechanism going to act on? And therefore what reality is it going to create?

We’ll start getting feelings of dread when we think about going to the gym, and we’ll start craving cake more than anything in the world. Your servo mechanism is trying to direct your actions to create the reality that you keep feeding it in your mind. Nobody can use willpower against the servo mechanism for any length of time.

It’s like repeatedly rewarding a dog’s good behaviour by saying “Good boy!” and then smacking it in the face. That dog will very quickly learn not to do that “good behaviour” ever again…

The results that we will achieve in life, are directly in proportion to how we see ourselves. This is our self image.

If we see ourselves as underachieving, short of money, trodden on by others and underappreciated, then this is the world that we will create around us.

Whenever we dare to try to take advantage of an opportunity that would get us higher in the world, our servo mechanism steps up and says “no, that doesn’t fit the image I have of who you are in this world”, before filling your body with so much fear at the thought of stepping out of your comfort zone that you’re paralyzed in place.

If we try and stand up for ourselves, the servo mechanism steps up and makes us appear meek, timid, unsure of ourselves, and weak… then surprise surprise people continue to walk all over us. We’re the creators of our own reality by the way that we see ourselves.

But what can we do about it?

There are a number of different exercises that we can start putting in place to strengthen our self image.

If you want to learn in detail how to actually do this to change your life, then I’d heavily recommend reading The New Psycho-Cybernetics yourself.

You can sign up to a month’s free trial to Audible and download it FREE here

But a couple of quick bits of advice to get started are finding your purpose in life, and focusing on who you want to become. 90% of us (If we set goals at all) will have “To get” or “To do” goals.

I want that car, or house, or I want to learn to play this instrument, or go on holiday to that place. But if we want to strengthen the self image, we also need to set “To be” goals.

Think about who you need to become to achieve the things you want in life. How will you act, what kind of decisions will you make, how will you hold yourself, how will you talk, and so on.

Picture that version of you in your mind every day for 5-10 minutes in vivid detail, and over time your behaviours will start to change in order to create the image of how you see yourself.

There’s a whole load more but I’m not going to go through them here, grab the audiobook if you want to learn more about it.

Speak to you soon,

Dan